How do I get world exports to and from...

How do I get world exports to and from...

How do I get world exports to and from various groups of countries, i.e. how do I aggregate partners and reporters?

Q: How do I get world exports to and from various groups of countries, i.e. how do I aggregate partners and reporters?

A: There is no reporter entity called “World” (although “World” is available as a partner), since it would require using estimated values for missing reporters, which so far is not done. Currently, one can aggregate all available reporters (for any given year and classification) by creating a favorite Country Group (you could call it “World aggregate”, for instance).

The easiest way to create your favorite Country Groups is starting from the pre-defined country groups, copying these to your own set of country groups, and then changing these groups as necessary.

When making the Query, use “My Favorite Country Groups” under Reporters to obtain your “World aggregate” data. Similarly, you can use “My favorite Country Groups” under Partners to find any other country groups of your choice.

The Country Groups as Partners will mostly be complete, unless a Reporter did not give the complete Partner breakdown to us.

The Country Groups as Reporters are aggregates of available Reporters (for the given year and classification). Therefore, one has to be very careful in drawing conclusions based on groups of Reporters, since you need to make sure which Reporters actually reported for the given year and classification.

Related questions:

Q: What is a Country Group?

A: A country group is a user-defined combination of countries (can be as reporters or partners), such as ASEAN or EU-27. If a country group is used in data selection, result will be aggregated automatically based on selected aggregation option. So instead of having 27 individual countries of EU-27, only one reporter/partner is returned.

Q: How do you create user defined country groups in the UN Comtrade?

A: You can define country groups for both ‘Reporters’ and ‘Partners’ in Express or Basic selections. The suggested way is as follows:

1) Click My Account à Favorites à Country Groups. For Add New Country Group, click ‘Insert New’. Choose a name for the country group and select the reporters. Click insert.
2) Note: There is no entity for World as a reporter (there is World as a Partner [Country Code 0]). We may consider developing an entity of World as a Reporter, but this would involve adding estimated trade data to the database, which so far there is no plan to do so. At this moment, you can aggregate all available Reporters (for any given year and classification). You should make this as one of your favorite Country Groups. To create user defined country group ‘WORLD’, type ‘all’ in the code box.
3) While making the Query, use My favorite Country Groups under Reporters to find your country group and use also My favorite Country Groups under Partners to find the country groups of your choice.

Note: It is not useful to use user defined country group ‘WORLD’ as partner, because World [Country Code 0] has been pre-aggregated during data processing.

The Country Groups as Reporters are aggregates of available Reporters (for the given year and classification). So, here, you have to be very careful in drawing conclusions based on your data, since you need to make sure which Reporters actually reported for the given year and classification.